Zach Braff: ‘You can be talented and good-looking, but acting success is still like winning the lottery’
How do you manage not to act starstruck when directing people like Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Harrison Ford? TopTramp
That’s where my acting comes in – I pretend that I don’t know how famous they are. Every actor really wants a leader. They want someone who knows the script really well, has a plan for how the scene is going to be executed, and – in the case of comedy – knows how to make it funny. The last thing any of those guys wants is someone coming in starstruck and wide-eyed. So I use my acting skills to pretend I’m not starstruck and treat them like normal people.
Your Fake Doctors, Real Friends podcast was a real help through lockdown. You were very emotionally open and personal; it was like catching up with friends. I still think about your line that making it in acting, even if you’re talented and good-looking, is like winning the lottery. Do you think that early 00s Zach Braff would make it in the present day the way you did? KamesJ
Back then, the broadcast networks were making so many pilots, at least it was work for people. Now, I think it’s a much harder landscape to break through. I firmly believe that you can be talented and good-looking, but success is still like winning the lottery. I know plenty of brilliant actors whose lottery ticket hasn’t come up yet. I started auditioning at 14 and barely got anything for years, so I’ve always felt very lucky.
And as far as the podcast, that’s so great to hear. We didn’t plan to start it during Covid, but it became a nice sort of warm hug for people who wanted a little bit of nostalgia. Donald [Faison, who plays Dr Turk] and I loved getting together, making each other laugh and reminiscing. So much so that we’re actually bringing it back.
Have you thought about Garden State 2? Haggisneepsnfatties
We did an anniversary concert for the soundtrack last year – we got most of the bands together and did a charity show for the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles – and that was really cool. Natalie Portman was there. I had told her that people have come to me about doing a musical of the movie. I love musicals, but I’ve always thought: “I don’t know if that I want to do that.” Then she said: “Why don’t you do it with the songs from the soundtrack?” It’s funny, because I never thought of that. I haven’t taken any steps to make it a reality, but I do daydream of somehow using the music that people love so much from the soundtrack to make it into a musical.
When you agreed to join the cast of BoJack Horseman, how did you feel about your character having such a grisly end? topfoot
I love the show, so it was so fun to play a cartoonish version of myself, and I just did whatever they said. I never said: “Don’t kill me that way. Don’t have Jessica Biel feast on my carcass,” or whatever the hell it was.
How much fun was it playing a small role in Arrested Development – to my mind the funniest, cleverest and silliest of all the US sitcoms? Manofthesouth
It was amazing, especially because I didn’t know I was going to be a never-nude until I got the script. In the world of Arrested Development, a never-nude is someone – mainly Tobias – who can never be fully naked, even in the shower, so he wears denim short-shorts.
Scrubs and Arrested Development were both doing really well. Jason Bateman and I were at some big event with the heads of both networks – we were NBC, they were Fox. We were laughing, saying: “It’d be fun if we each guested on each other’s show, but the networks would never let us do that.” Then we realised: “They’re all here. Let’s just go ask them.” They said “Sure,” so I guested on Arrested and Jason did an episode of Scrubs as an ostrich farmer.
Who would you most like to cast in Dr Acula: The Movie – JD’s vampire-doctor screenplay in Scrubs? PickleMan
Michael B Jordan and Leonardo DiCaprio, if we’re in the fantasy where we’re going to make an amazing, huge-budget version. Remember at the end of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure when they make the movie of his life and cast beautiful movie stars, and Pee-wee ends up as a bellhop? That’s the version of Dr Acula I want: megastars, while Donald and I are just in the background.
You’ve had huge success whether you’re acting, writing or directing. If you were to pick one standout pinch-me moment, what would it be? Turnipsnitzel
Morgan Freeman saying yes to my film was one of those great moments. So was standing in the back of the Eccles theatre in Park City when Garden State premiered, thinking: “Holy shit, how did this happen?”
When I got Scrubs, I was waiting tables. I put my Motorola StarTAC phone on the passenger seat as I was driving home from the final callback, and was just eyeing it to see if it was going to ring. Then it rang, I pulled over, called my parents, then I called the manager of the restaurant. She said: “I’m so happy for you, babe, but you got to work tonight still.” I said: “Oh, don’t worry, I’m coming in.” So I worked the whole shift knowing I probably wouldn’t be waiting tables for a couple of years.
If you were on a plane and there was an announcement asking if there’s a doctor on board, would you put your hand up? MrSOBaldrick
Absolutely not. I don’t know anything. I really don’t. We have the most amazing consultants on set, including this wonderful nurse who’s just a badass. She shows us what to do and tells us what the hell we’re saying. Anyone who thinks we know anything for real is crazy.
Scrubs taught me a lot about illness, life and death. Did it do the same for you? waydgroods
I was so young when we did the original series that I don’t think I had any experience with loss and being in hospitals and grief. In the years since, I’ve lost so many people. I’ve sat in hospital and ICU waiting rooms, waiting with bated breath for the doctor to come in with good or bad news. I’ve seen how the nurses run the whole hospital. I’ve witnessed it first-hand in a way I hadn’t as a young man. So I think now I have even more respect. I feel more like I’m playing a superhero as the guy who’s the chief of medicine at an underfunded hospital who’s meant to be a particularly badass doctor.
Does your hair have its own agent? Dr_J_A_Zoidberg
My hair’s agent is that I take a shower at night and then I go to sleep on it and you get magical bedhead.
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